Seven Steps to a Perfect Story

[Philip Overby]

Found this online Latest News on Content Marketing - CMA - SEVEN STEPS TO THE PERFECT STORY and thought it could be useful for some people just to kick their story ideas into gear. By no means "perfect" (because no technique is really perfect except what you make your own) but this could help foster some thoughts about an upcoming project you may have stalled out on or just brainstorming in general.

Do you think flowcharts like this help you or do you just sort of ignore them? I personally find templates to be a good jumping off point for beginning writers (I'm in the camp that "aspiring writers" don't exist, you either write or you don't) so they may help you craft stories in order to find your own voice and technique.

 

[SeverinR]

I don't get 5 or 7.
Rule of three?
Don't give the audience 4, but 2 and 2.

I do like the parts I understand.
I have written several quests and several voyage and return.

Weird, My series tend to stay similar. The series of stories based on quest stay with the quest, and the voyage and return does similar in the subsequent books.
Maybe I need to change the follow up books.

 

[Penpilot]

I don't get 5 or 7.
Rule of three?
Don't give the audience 4, but 2 and 2.

Here's my understanding of it. Rule of three - Three is considered the perfect number for stuff in terms of writing. Having something happen three times is the perfect number to establish it. Eg someone trip three times establishes that they're a clutz. One is too few, two can be coincidence, three is a pattern. Same with the number of items, whether they be cars or characters, three has this effect that it's the minimum number that creates a fullness idea. It's like if a person has one cat, it's just a pet, they have two, they just love cats, if they have three or more, then they start to look obsessive.

The part about 4 is this. Four is the answer. Don't tell the audience the answer, give them the parts of the equation and let them come up with the answer.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Here's my understanding of it. Rule of three - Three is considered the perfect number for stuff in terms of writing. Having something happen three times is the perfect number to establish it. Eg someone trip three times establishes that they're a clutz. One is too few, two can be coincidence, three is a pattern. Same with the number of items, whether they be cars or characters, three has this effect that it's the minimum number that creates a fullness idea. It's like if a person has one cat, it's just a pet, they have two, they just love cats, if they have three or more, then they start to look obsessive.

It's worth noting that this is culture-dependent--read One Thousand and One Nights, and everything happens in fours.

 

[Philip Overby]

I especially think the archetypes are of interest. I'm a big fan of studying archetypes when it comes to developing characters because they're a launching pad for really getting more depth. Our own Black Dragon discusses this in his new book The Mythic Guide to Characters: Writing Characters Who Enchant and Inspire: Antonio del Drago, Derek Bowen: Amazon.com: Kindle Store

He goes in depth about each archetype and how many of them are applied to some of the most successful books in history. I highly recommend it.

Yeah, as far as the Rule of Threes, I think it can change depending on culture, but people absorb information by repetition sometimes. Penpilot summed it up perfectly. However, I think this applies more to visual mediums. I wouldn't necessarily say that would always be needed for literature. There's a whole lot more you can do with the written word to establish a character is a certain way other than just having repeated actions.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Speaking more generally, I tend to see attempts to categorize plot arcs and archetypes fail in one of two ways:

1): They're so generic as to mean nothing. It's like those horoscopes where every sign's statement applies equally well to you.

2): They become so specific that they're no longer universal. I think this is more useful--it's valuable to be able to tell how Star Wars is like The Magnificent Seven--but to me, it's even more useful to learn to bend, twist, and shatter these patterns. Put characters in the wrong roles, have miraculous coincidences fail to occur, even kill off characters whose survival is integral to having the story continue in its normal course. (Even Star Wars switched things up a little by liberating Leia long before Vader's ultimate defeat.)

P.S. As for the concept of training wheels, that's why I advocate starting out with fanfic. A good fic writer learns the art of "what if"--"What if this character hadn't died in Episode 3?" "What if these two actually confessed their love for each other?" "What if they were all students in high school?" It's the perfect practice for changing things around.

 

[Philip Overby]

Not a big fan fic person. If that helps some people though, more power to them.

However, the point of archetypes IS to subvert them in someway, not just use them as your sole guide. That's why they are helpful for me. They work for some people and don't for others, but I think studying why these archetypes exist and how they can be subverted is helpful for any writer.

For instance if you have the Mentor archetype, typically it is like this:

1. older man
2. wise beyond his years
3. probably dies at some point

Obi-Wan Kenobi is a good example of this archetype and he's one of the most recognizable characters in all of fiction. However, if everyone just copied him directly, it becomes stale.

Now if you take the Mentor archetype and subvert it, you can do a lot of things with it. For instance, having someone in the Mentor role who is a drunk, ignorant, and generally annoying, yet is integral to the main character's training.

I think archetypes can be helpful to character creation because you can combine and subvert them to get the right mix of character you want. Once you have used the sort of "template" then you can start adding or taking away attributes that don't work for your specific character.

For me using fan fic and just saying "What if this happened?" isn't much different than just coming up with "What if" scenarios for your own characters.

 

[Ireth]

Now if you take the Mentor archetype and subvert it, you can do a lot of things with it. For instance, having someone in the Mentor role who is a drunk, ignorant, and generally annoying, yet is integral to the main character's training.

I think archetypes can be helpful to character creation because you can combine and subvert them to get the right mix of character you want. Once you have used the sort of "template" then you can start adding or taking away attributes that don't work for your specific character.

Amen to this. The Mentor in my vampire novel is not quite a typical one -- for one thing, he winds up as the hero's love interest. XDD Also he looks a lot younger than he really is thanks to being a vampire. And the hero has to care for him about as much as he teaches and directs the hero.

 

[Sheriff Woody]

Don't give the audience 4, but 2 and 2.

This is actually a quote from Terry Rossio, who said it years before Andrew Stanton. I'm sure someone said it before Mr. Rossio, but what it means is that you should not tell the audience everything in a simplistic manner that insults their intelligence.

In other words, instead of saying flat-out "this is that", you design two separate scenes that illustrate two different parts of that one idea, so when the reader reads one scene and then reads the other, they are able to put two and two together and come away with the understanding that is four.

This is often accomplished through dialogue, and is a very handy way of simultaneously avoiding exposition and adding subtext.

So, if I see how big the shark is and then say to you "We're gonna need a bigger boat.", what I'm really saying is that we're doomed because that mother is HUGE! Seeing the shark = 2, commenting on the size of the boat = 2. Put them together and you understand how ill-equipped the crew of the Orca is and how they underestimated the predator they sent out to stop = 4.

Sure, you can have Chief Brody simply say to Quint "That shark is a lot bigger than we anticipated, and I believe we should return to land and re-evaluate our options." But if you did that, nobody would be quoting the movie almost 40 years later.

This can also be accomplished through actions and juxtaposition of images and situations.

I watched the movie Wreck-It Ralph the other night, and there's a great example of this, where Ralph is seen living in a pile of bricks all by himself while looking across the way to a penthouse where all the other characters from his video game are celebrating its anniversary with cake and a big party. Everyone is there, except Ralph. Without any words spoken, we understand that Ralph is not accepted by the rest of the game cast because he's the villain, and we understand his desire to join them and be included.

4 = boring. 2 + 2 allows the audience/reader to play along.

 

[Ophiucha]

It's certainly very over-simplified, but I think everyone gets something like this when they first start out writing. In school we're taught the 'plot triangle', which also is not universally applicable, and we're taught the basic terms like hero and protagonist. When I started writing, the internet was relatively fleshed out, the late 90s/early 00s, enough so that there were the very beginnings of the Mary Sue tests (not the ones that are popular today, but the discussions that built up to them) and quote websites with witticisms from Stephen King and Orson Scott Card. None of these things are the best things to use as a guideline once you go professional, but they don't hurt when you've got nothing but an idea and whatever your computer's default word processor is.

But I'm not sure it's a great rulebook for a would-be professional novelist. Part of writing is subverting the norm, and if you're anything other than a beginner I would worry if you need an entire step laid out for you about choosing your characters.

 

[Feo Takahari]

This is actually a quote from Terry Rossio, who said it years before Andrew Stanton. I'm sure someone said it before Mr. Rossio, but what it means is that you should not tell the audience everything in a simplistic manner that insults their intelligence.

In other words, instead of saying flat-out "this is that", you design two separate scenes that illustrate two different parts of that one idea, so when the reader reads one scene and then reads the other, they are able to put two and two together and come away with the understanding that is four.

This is often accomplished through dialogue, and is a very handy way of simultaneously avoiding exposition and adding subtext.

So, if I see how big the shark is and then say to you "We're gonna need a bigger boat.", what I'm really saying is that we're doomed because that mother is HUGE! Seeing the shark = 2, commenting on the size of the boat = 2. Put them together and you understand how ill-equipped the crew of the Orca is and how they underestimated the predator they sent out to stop = 4.

Sure, you can have Chief Brody simply say to Quint "That shark is a lot bigger than we anticipated, and I believe we should return to land and re-evaluate our options." But if you did that, nobody would be quoting the movie almost 40 years later.

4 = boring. 2 + 2 allows the audience/reader to play along.

Best example of that I've ever seen: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (the game, not the movie.) We're never directly told what the villain's goal is, because we don't need to hear it. We just see him, old and sickly, coughing blood into a handkerchief, and then we see him try to steal an artifact that can turn back time. The implications are obvious enough without spelling them out.

 

[Sheriff Woody]

Best example of that I've ever seen: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (the game, not the movie.) We're never directly told what the villain's goal is, because we don't need to hear it. We just see him, old and sickly, coughing blood into a handkerchief, and then we see him try to steal an artifact that can turn back time. The implications are obvious enough without spelling them out.

Perfect example.

 

[Ophiucha]

That example reminds me of a terrible counter-example, from Prometheus. I liked the film, but lord, it could lay it on thick. And the old dying dude was the worst offender.